Sarajevo, Bosnia-Hercegovinia

Editor's note: don't travel in Eastern Europe without a computer if you expect to use the internet. This internet spot in Igalo, Montenegro, doesn't allow for usb uploading. So no pictures this time.

We took a break from cycling last week, hopped a bus in Sabac, Serbia, and within five hours (the bus overheated on one of the mountain passes. everyone got off and watched the driver pour water into the engine) we were in Sarajevo. The sun was setting against the mountains and the air was thick and hot. We cycled past tall soviet apartments splattered with bullet fire and big blast wounds, laundry on the balconies, people coming and going. We cycled past mosques, some beaming and freshly made from cement. The call to prayer sounded, and we finally found the center, some 12 km's from the suburban bus station.

The city was packed with young people. Everywhere you looked, they drank coffee, walked, biked, chatted on their stoop, drove their cars, and went to work, church, home. After living in Karlovy Vary, where the average age must be 83, this was a welcomed change.

The hostels in Sarajevo were booming, and the prices were a bit steep in comparison to our Serbian experiences. Tourists were thick like flies. We met a healthy looking girl from Canada-Canadians have a way of just looking so healthy- who had been traveling for a year. "I did Czech Republic," she said. "And then I did Hungary and Croatia." Been there, done that.

Michal didn't like Sarajevo, called it an Urbanist's LSD Dream, but I found it fascinating. I think if you come from living amid Communist Era cement bohemoths of buildings, like in CZ, you don't get a kick of their southern Slavic counterparts. To me this is still exotic.